[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12024]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE DEBT CEILING

  (Mr. CARNAHAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. CARNAHAN. Mr. Speaker, we voted last week on a plan put forward 
by my Republican colleagues that I strongly opposed and was rejected by 
the Senate because it would have ended Medicare as we know it while 
preserving giveaways to Big Oil and corporations shipping jobs 
overseas.
  Now Speaker Boehner has introduced a new plan which he says follows 
the spirit of the last plan. Rating agencies say Mr. Boehner's plan 
won't work. It won't prevent a ratings downgrade, it will destroy 
hundreds of thousand of jobs, weaken the American dollar, and raise 
interest rates on loans to keep families in their homes and students in 
school. It is a plan that experts tell us up front won't work, is not 
worth voting on, let alone passing.
  Instead of retreating to our partisan quarters and refusing to 
cooperate, when the going gets tough we expect leaders to get to work. 
This default crisis is a test of leadership and those willing to drive 
our country over the economic cliff fail that test and need to get 
serious.

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